Frum, Again

Avid readers may recall that I had to correct David Frum in regards to the gold standard and the Great Depression. Frum is once again attacking the gold standard, but this time with an ad hominem attack of its main proponent in the political arena, Rep. Ron Paul:

But [Rep. Paul’s] core supporters also thrill to his self-taught monetary views, which amount to a rejection of everything taught by modern economists from Alfred Marshall to Milton Friedman.

While I am certainly no advocate of the gold standard, I am quite leery of with regards to discretionary monetary policy. It is my view that the purpose of the central bank should be to limit inflation and I would prefer that this be done through an explicit inflation target. In this respect, my view is quite similar to Milton Friedman’s and thus I am quite puzzled at David Frum’s assertions. Rep. Paul’s main reason for advocating the gold standard, at least to my knowledge, is a strong disregard for discretionary monetary policy and the inflation and distortions that it can create. In this way, Paul is very similar to the likes of Milton Friedman, despite the fact that Friedman did not advocate the gold standard (for more on this, see Peter Boettke’s stellar post on Frum).

The essential point is that the debate is not so much about the gold standard as it is about monetary policy carried out by individuals and thus the potential for error. Many influential economists including Friedman, F.A. Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises expressed strong doubts about the desirability of a central bank with discretionary power over monetary policy. Hayek’s Prices and Production explains in detail the distortions that can take place due to discretionary monetary policy. In addition, Friedman advocated monetary policy rules as favorable to individuals at a central bank. So perhaps such views aren’t as out of the mainstream as Frum would have you believe.

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F.A. Hayek warned us: Carl Schramm Buys Himself A George Eastman Medal (for academy/economy-killing Schrammenomics) from the University of Rochester While Dumbing Down The Universe With Schrammenomics
April 26, 2009 by entrepreneurshipeconomist
F.A. Hayek warned us about the Orwellian Carl Schramms of the world–the “Mastermind” statists who would rise to oppose entrepreneurs in the name of entrepreneurship and kill innovation while pretending to embrace it, as they bought themselves medals, honors, and awards while building a cult-of-personaility regime around themelves; transforming a noble foundation (the Kauffman Foundation) into a personal vanity press, compound, and ATM machine; tormenting and sabatoging superior competitors via vile subterfuge, undermining the free market, and raging against truth and reason. “Even more significant of the inherent weakness of the collectivist theories is the extraordinary paradox that from the assertion that society is in some sense more than merely the aggregate of all individuals their adherents regularly pass by a sort of intellectual somersault to the thesis that in order that the coherence of this larger entity be safeguarded it must be subjected to conscious control, that is, to the control of what in the last resort must be an individual mind (SCHRAMMENOMICS! ONLY ONE MAN CANRECEIVE EASTMAN MEDLAS AND WRITE THE BOOKS!). It thus comes about that in practice it is regularly the theoretical collectivist who extols individual reason (CARL SCHRAMM PRETENDS TO SALUTE ENTRPENEURSHIP AND INNOVATORS) and demands that all forces of society be made subject to the direction of a single mastermind (SCHRAMM SECRETLY SEEKS TO DESTROY HIS SUPERIOR COMPETITORS, USING THE KAUFMAN FUNDS TO PUNISH SUCCESS AND INNOVATION AND FUND SYCOPHANTIC GROUPTHINK SUPPORTERS), while it is the individualist who recognizes the limitations of the powers of individual reason and consequently advocates freedom as a means for the fullest development of the powers of the interindividual process.”

Just like the firefighters in Farenheight 411, Schramm’s chief aim is not to save the Mises and Hayek books, but to burn metaphorically them, as he ignored F.A. Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises in his dumbed-down, insipid, and dense GOOD CAPITALISM, BAD CAPITALSIM.

Is it any wonder Schramm is trying to erase F.A. Hayek and L.V. Mises from discussions on capitalsim, while he grows his dumbed-down, “growthology-MBA-buzzword” regime and funnels millions of Kauffman dollars into his own pocket?

After seven years of dictatorial, dumbed-down Schrammenomics and Carl Schramm redefining exalted entrepreneurship in his own maniacal, egostistical, dumbed-down, carboard bureaucratic, shapeshifting image, the economy is in shambles (schrammbles).

Because of a massive ego which dwarfs his meager intellectual talents, over the past seven years Schramm has defunded true economists who are smarter than him (or who mention Hayek and Mises whom Schramm completely ignored in his indecipherable, dumbed-down book GOOD CAPITALISM (SHCRAMMENOMICS): BAD CAPITALISM (HAYEK: MISES) while hijacking the Kauffman Foundation’s resources, funneling millions into his own pockets, and devoting the rest to funding dog and pony shows and wiring millions to university administrators, who most naturally oppose true innovation, honorable scholarship, and the true entreprnuership which would rescue our ailing economy, while embracing Schrammenomics.

Carl Schramm Buys Himself A George Eastman (for economy-killing Schrammenomics) Medal from the University of Rochester While Dumbing Down The Universe With Schrammenomics

Wikipedia reports: Schramm received the George Eastman Medal from the University of Rochester in …

The Kauffman website reports: “The University of Rochester, an inaugural Kauffman Campus, submitted a proposal to make entrepreneurship a comprehensive and defining institutional goal.” Kauffman wired millions to Rochester.

Conflict of interest? Should foundation heads receive medals with entrepreneur’s and innovator’s names on them after hijacking foundations bequeathed by other entrepreneurs? Especially when the foundation heads have done far more harm than good in dumbing down the academy and killing the eocnomy over their seven year anti-entrepreneurship, pro-Statist crusade and reign with an iron fist?

So it is that Carl Schramm uses the Kauffman Foundations funds to buy himself medals, while simultaneously dumbing down the academy and killing the ecomony with Schrammenomics.

Carl Schramm has redefined entrepreneurship as 1) hijacking a foundation and transforming it into a vanity press for one’s own unscholarly works (and armies of MBAs/Jds chanting growthology, growthology, growthology) which neglect to mention Nobel Laureate economists and intellectual giants such as F.A. Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises. He then handpicks a cadre of useful idiots/Dane Stanglers to attempt to backdate Kauffman research to make Schramm the Statist look like an Austrian eocnomist, while Schramm bases the Kauffman Foundation’s grants on which student-debt growing college administrators give him the most prestigious medals–not for his non-existent, insipid, dumbed-down scholarship, but for his ability to wire another man’s (Kauffman) and noble Foundation’s money.

Schramm is not Kauffman, and when he steps down, a thousand flowers will bloom as capital is allocated towards entreprneuers, students, professors, and innovators; and not towards the schrammenomics dog-and-pony show, medal-buying, Nobel prize campaigning cartel.

“I sit on a man’s back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.” –Tolstoy Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence (1886)

F.A. Hayek/Mises warned us about Carl Schramm et al.’s Temporal Tyranny and Postoffice, where he hires thug deputies such as Dane Stangler to backdate research and make it look like Schrammenomics embraces the Austrains, when, in fact, he compeletly ignores them in word, deed, spirit, and action–in his books and medal acquisitions alike.

Because Schramm has hijacked the $2.5 billion Kauffman foundation, he runs it as a top-down dictarorial CEO would, with every action motivated by self-preservation as the Nobel in economics slips further and further beyond his intellectually-inept reach. Sycophantic lockstepping lawyers such as Dane Stangler will never call Schramm out, as their salary depends on supporting Statist Schrammenomics above truth, beauty, classical economics, deep scholarship, and reason, and they will go so far as to backdate Kauffman research to serve their corrupt medal-buying master.

Carl Schramm did not build Kauffman, and it is time for Carl to step down.
Carl Schramm is not Kauffman, and it is time for Carl to step down.
Carl Schramm does not own Kauffman, and it is time for Carl to step down.
Kauffman did not will for his vast welath to become a Schrammenomics vanity press, and it is time for Schramm to step down.
Nowhere did Kauffman will for Carl Schramm to use a $2.5 billion warchest to purchase medals form Rochester, pen and promote insipid, self-serving books lauding Schrammenomics via a Kauffman-funded vanity press/growthology MBA-buzzword blogging cartel, while completely ignoring intellectual diants such as L.V. Mises and F.A. Hayek, and it is time for Carl Schramm to setp down.
Nowhere in the foundation’s charter did it stipulate that Carl Schramm was to lord over the Kauffman Foundation for all of entirety as the economy withered, crashed, and died; as millions of entrepeneurs, works, and common folk lost their homes, savings, pensions, businesses, and jobs to Schrammenomics’ self-serving socilaism; and the entrpreneurial spirit was replaced with Schrammenomics

The most important elements in entrepreneurship are character and integrity. The most important elements for Statists/Schrammeconomist are the lack of character and integrity and the ability to use words to mislead and deceive while laying claim to a dead entrepreneur’s estate. While Hayek and Mises used words for truth, Schramm uses words for mere personal profit and purchasing medals and promoting lackluster, anti-intellectual, dumbed-down books, and then when his lackluster, anti-intellectual, unscholarly works fall short, he has to try and put all better economists out of business by leveraging his $2.5 billion warchest. Imagine if Hayek and Mises had used a $2.5 billion warchest to put their competitors out of business and buy medals. They would never do this. For they had character and integrity, which Schramm the self-serving tyrant/Statist completely lacks.

Whenever those with a fundamentally socialist, central-planning, bureaucratic mindset approach entrepreneurship, they generally end up creating a groupthink tyranny which kills the spirit of entrepreneurship, while simultaneouly profiting off the fruits of entrepreneurship and free markets, even as such exalted entities wither and die under the Schrammeconomists’ reign of corporate terror, whence a Foundation’s resources are leveraged to put competitors out of business so that the Schrammeconomist’s inferior work might prevail in the dumbed-down market, thusly exlating Schramm as teh eocnomy and academia decline. The study and teaching of entrepreneurship requires a great character and intellect, and an even greater humility. Over the past seven years Carl Schramm has demonstrated that he lacks character, intellect, and humility; and the economy and academy have suffered immensely under is reign.

1) Carl Schramm lacks character: Schramm has beocme famous for syaing one thing while doing another and making promises he never keeps. This has been pointed out elsewhere on the internet, and it is also manifested in that he runs the Kauffman Foundation like a tyrant, pocketing millions of dollars for his inspidid treatises on Capitalism which compeletly ignore the towering giants of the field including Ludwig Von Mises and F.A. Hayek. Not referencing the Greats who have walked before you is a serious sign of unscholarly egomania, ineptitude, and a withered character. Rather than funding true economists and entrepreurs, Schramm actually uses the Kauffman foundation’s funds to oppose them while campaigning for the Nobel in economics, wiring hundreds of millions to Statists and intellectually-indifferent University administrators. Schramm runs the Kauffman Foundation not as a charitable foundation, but as a corrupt corporation which enriches Schramm in a massive manner with millions, while also allowing him to try and put his competitors out of business, funding groupthink growthology bloggers to dumb down the internet. Should a foundation be run by those with lackluster, unscholarly books to promote and a track record for academic irresponsibility? Will they not by and by use the foundation’s resources to try and put their superior competitors out of business in cloaked, obfuscating, unmanly manners, all the while preaching fair markets and free markets? Because Schramm lacks character, integrity, and intellect, he profits not by serving entrepreneurship’s ideals, but by saying one thing while doing another and hiring Dane Stangler to backdate research trying to claim that Schramm was the first to discover/rediscover Austrian economics. Actually the Austrian economists discovered Austrian economics. And Schramm destests them because they call his failed Statist bluff with every word.

It is interesting that Dealbreaker references Carl Shram of the Kauffman Foundation as an authority on ethics. Those of us who live in the Kansas City region know that Carl Schram and been a controversial figure since he was appointed to his post a number of years ago. Board members have resigned in protest of his leadership style and strategic choices. His controversial leadership led to the Missouri Attorney General reviewing the Kauffman Foundation for not staying true to the intent of Ewing Kauffman. The purpose of this review was stated as:

Ewing Kauffman was famous as an ethical leader. Carl Schramm is not.
–http://dealbreaker.com/2007/05/the-unsurprising-failure-of-et.php

2. Carl Schramm lacks Intellect: Suppose you were to write a treatise on philosophy and leave out Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates. Suppose you were to write a treatise on physics and leave out Einstein and Newton. Schramm wrote a treatise on kapitalism and he left out Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek and his teacher Ludwig Von Mises.

Conduct a search in GOOD CPITALISM: BAD CAPITALISM.

0 results for ‘hayek’
0 results for ‘mises’

Now Schramm has hired Dane Stangler to backdate Kauffman research to show that really Schramm was thinking about the Austrians all along; and again this ties into Schramm’s complete lack of character and corrupt nature.

3) Carl Schramm Lacks Humility: When one has no achievements other than commandeering a foundation for one’s own personal profit and intellectually-indifferent, vapid, Statist vanity press, one has nothing to be humble about. If Schramm had any humility he would apoligize for what he and his Statist, doublespeaking philosophies have done to academia and the economy, and he would step down.

Hayek reminds us that economics is about values, ethics, and character–not about doublespeaking Schrammenomics:

“I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our time is due to a certain timidity about soiling their hands by going from purely scientific questions into value questions. This is a belief deliberately maintained by the other side because if they admitted that the issue is not a scientific question, they would have to admit that their science is antiquated and that, in academic circles, it occupies the position of astrology and not one that has any justification for serious consideration in scientific discussion. It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide.
Conversation at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C. (9 February 1978); published in A Conversation with Friedrich A. Von Hayek: Science and Socialism (1979) –Hayek

“If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.” Schramm has done more harm than good by placing his campaign for the Nobel Economics and hiring/funding growthology groupthink bloggers, over supporting entrepreneurs, innovators, and entrepreneurship. After seven years of Schrammenomics, look at the economy where millions ar elosing their jobs an dhomes. Look at the academy and the skyrocketing tuitions at the Kauffman campuses which place studnets in massive, unprecedented debt, with Kauffman campuses such as Oberlin and Keynon oft leading the way.

How many more years of Schramenomics will the Kauffman board allow? When Schramm steps down, a thousand flowers will bloom, and the greats such as Ludwig Von Mises and F.A. Hayek will be given theior rightful place in the academy, as opposed to Schramm’s MBA/lawyer groupthink thugs who Schramm handpicked to serve the Schrammenomics tyranny over truth and reason.

In the recent Wall Street Journal article, Carl Schramm took great, smirking pride in the fact that nobody really knows what it is that the Kauffman Foundation is or does. Well, if you were out buying medals, building a cabal of lockstepping growthology MBA-buzzword bloggers to further your campaign for a Nobel Prize with unscholarly, unhorable, anti-intellectual books, while you let the eocnomy die while keeping Kauffman’s funds from reaching the students, innovators, schoalrs, and entrpreneurs, you would probably not want anyone to know what the Kauffman foundation is or does either.

This is simply tragic.

Kauffman was a great, definitive man with character, direction, and exalted leadership.

Schramm is a cowering, quivering doublespeaker and politician who is way out of his league in intellectual matters, which is why he must deny the bright sunlight of Hayek and Von Mises, so as to keep the Kauffman Foundation in darkness during his reign of terror and anti-intellectualism, anti-free marketplace of ideas. The tragic result is that instead of leading–instead of using Kauffman’s funds to exalt and educate and further innovation and entrepreneurship, Schramm is using them to purchase medals, line his private pockets, promote his vanity press, and bring others down; leveraging a $2.5 billion endowment to kill the free marketplace of ideas and spam the internet with links and trackbacks to his “growthology” PR campaign.

And after seven years of Schrammenomics, is the eocnomy better off? Are you better off? Probably only if you are Dane Stangler or one of Schrammenomics’ Kauffman-funded disciples.

“[Socialists] promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office.”” –Ludwig Von Mises predicting what the Kauffman Foundation would become after seven years of tryannical, corporate-CEO, personal-profiteering, anti-intellectual, anti-entrepreneurial Schrammenomics.

It is interesting that Dealbreaker references Carl Shram of the Kauffman Foundation as an authority on ethics. Those of us who live in the Kansas City region know that Carl Schram and been a controversial figure since he was appointed to his post a number of years ago. Board members have resigned in protest of his leadership style and strategic choices. His controversial leadership led to the Missouri Attorney General reviewing the Kauffman Foundation for not staying true to the intent of Ewing Kauffman. The purpose of this review was stated as: